Overseas Military Vote Compromised by Budget Cuts

Every vote counts. Some elections have even proven that votes from dead people count too – which has led to ways to improve the process as well as continued exploration into ways to ensure that not EVERY vote counts but rather “every U.S. citizen that is alive – that person’s vote counts.” Unless you’re stationed overseas.

In the 20th century, and even the first few years of the 21st century, if you were stationed overseas the practical nature of getting an absentee ballot was – well, not practical; and even if you did get your ballot, the chances of your vote actually arriving on time and counting was a bit better than a “slim chance.”
So in 2009 Congress passed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act and it was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The goal of MOVE was to make it easier for service people deployed overseas and U.S. citizens living abroad to cast ballots back in their home states.

You can guess where I’m going with this.

One of the key provisions of MOVE required each military branch to create an installation voting assistance office (IVAO) for every military base outside an immediate combat zone.

Execution has been far from perfect. The Pentagon’s inspector general, the military’s internal watchdog, reported Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 it got a disappointing result when it tried to locate such voting assistance offices on each installation earlier this year.

“Results were clear. Our attempts to contact IVAOs failed about 50 percent of the time,” the inspector general reported. “We concluded the Services had not established all the IVAOs as intended by the MOVE Act because, among other issues, the funding was not available.”

Funding.

The Pentagon estimates it could cost $15 million to $20 million a year to create all the offices required by the law.

Perhaps we should pass laws only if we can fund those laws. Or at least remind our representatives that the slogan is “Under promise, over deliver;” not “Over promise, under deliver.”

But I digress. If you are living or serving overseas, or know someone who is, here is how the process is “supposed” to work:

Step 1: Overseas and military voters must register in their state of residence, request an absentee ballot and return the completed ballot before the deadline in order to effectively cast a vote.

Washington voters can visit www.sos.wa.gov to register to vote online with MyVote or a Facebook App, or the old fashioned way of snail mail. The “Overseas and Military Voters” page provides straightforward directions. Washington State takes admirable pains to ensure its voters are informed. Click on “2012 Ballot Measures” for state initiatives and referenda. Residents can also request voters’ pamphlets and access county-specific candidate information on the “Military and Overseas Voters” page.

Bottom line: every living U.S. citizen vote should count. For those of you overseas, you’ll need to put some work in to ensure your vote actually does.